December 4, 2005
Bill writes, Sandra makes it right.
(We read about the Green Hotel in our Lonely Planet guide book, and it sounded so lovely we had to check it out. Here is what we thought about it.)
As soon as you pass through the gate from the street into the grounds of the Green Hotel, you know you have found a respite from the hubbub and heat of the streets of Mysore. The eye is immediately drawn to the stately, old hotel on the left; the epitome of the British Raj, as portrayed in the epic, “The Jewel in the Crown.”
Sandra relaxing at the Green Hotel
Across the driveway in front of it and to the right of the gate, the hotel faces a raised expanse of green lawn dotted with groups of lounge chairs and tables inviting you to sit down, kick off your hot sandals and relax, with your feet cooling in the lush grass. You can’t resist. You can imagine the Britishers playing croquette and sipping gimlets. An outdoor restaurant runs perpendicular to the hotel alongside the grassy area, and the covered dining area looks like a cool retreat, if the sun gets too hot. As you settle into the chairs, a waiter approaches to offer a selection of refreshments. He recommends nimbu-pani, which is lime juice, water, a little sugar and lots of ice. A very good choice, indeed!
Across the lawn from the restaurant is a long arbor covered with vines and leaves. A garden filled with various trees and shrubs, a particularly fine Traveler’s Palm, and plots of seedlings, are at the other end of the lawn.
When the waiter returns with the refreshments, he tells you that the “Green Bazaar” is held under the big arbor every Sunday morning. A number of people come in from the country to offer organic produce and homemade jams and tonics for sale.
Lobby of the Green Hotel, with the
indoor dining area at the far end.
Rested and refreshed, you wander over to explore the hotel. Originally the Chittaranjan Palace, it was built in the 1920’s by the local maharaja, Wadiyar IV, for his three daughters. It was set up in 1995 as a model of sustainable tourism by the UK-based Charities Advisory Trust, and renamed The Green Hotel. The goals are to preserve the historic buildings and grounds; to use locally-produced crafts, furnishings and materials; to be a good employer offering fair pay, employment and training; to use environmentally-friendly practices and devices, such as solar heating; and to provide traditional hospitality for the enjoyment of their visitors. According to a note on the menu, all profits are distributed to charitable and environmental projects in India.
The white outside of the hotel has a bit of an art deco feel to it, but the interior is open and cool, with extremely high ceilings, columns, arched openings, windows with colored glass, wrought iron grills flanked by large, dark wood shutters, and filled with wonderful antiques. In the center of the ground floor is a large room that is now a lounge. Around its perimeter is the lobby, the dining room, a banquet room and a suite of guest rooms.
The Green Hotel library is a good place to
escape the heat of the day, or to wait out
a sudden downpour.
The second (or first, as it is called here) floor is reached by two flights of beautiful wooden stairs, with large mirrors across the entire landing half-way up. The mirrors give the stairs a spacious feeling they wouldn’t otherwise have. In the middle of that floor is also an expansive, well-appointed room, obviously for more elegant dinning, with a large banqueting table. Its perimeter has reading areas with comfortable chairs and low tables, including a chess table and crokinole board. Well-cushioned window seats placed so high up the wall that small stairs are required to reach them, entice you to curl up there with a good book. In one corner of this floor is a small, but well-stocked, library in which one can pleasantly while away the time, if the weather is too hot or too rainy.
You decide to try the restaurant, and must choose if you want to sit in the dining room, on the lawn or in the shaded outside area. Deciding on the last option as being most pleasant, you leave the hotel through the exit of the ground floor banquet area. I turns out the exit leads into the foyer of the men’s bathroom, and then outside. This kind of thing ceases to surprise when one has been in India for awhile.
The window seats on the upper
floor are also nice places to escape.
As you make your way around the hotel, you notice beds filled with seedlings around the perimeters of the lawns, hotel, and other buildings. They seem to be everywhere, and are not what one normally sees as decorative boarders. You also notice small groups of solar-cell panels scattered along roofs and sides of buildings. As you learn later, the beds are filled with organic herbs, which the hotel grows for its own use, and the solar panels keep emergency lights charged for use during the frequent power failures. These are only some of the things done to make the institution more ecologically sustainable.
Settling into the comfortably-padded rattan chairs of the restaurant, you peruse the extensive menu. The breakfast page has an interesting mix of standard western fare, such as porridge and pancakes, along with Indian poories and stuffed parathas. It’s too late for breakfast, and the wide range of Indian, Chinese and Continental snacks looks intriguing, but a full meal is what the stomach is demanding.
The listing from which to choose covers six pages of Indian, Chinese, Continental (“plain home cooking”), “veg”, and “non-veg” options. The Vegetable Kabai, diced mixed vegetables in a creamy coconut sauce complemented with either mashed potatoes or one of the rice dishes, turns out to be excellent. That combination comes to 120 rupees, or about $3.20. The Mutton Rogan Josh, lamb in a curried yoghurt sauce, for about the same price, is delicious, too. This was a bit of a risk, as “mutton” can mean boney, gristly goat, tough old sheep, or just about any other meat handy at the time, but turned out to be an excellent choice in this case. It is well-complemented with the excellent Aloo Paratha, a layered, fried bread stuffed with small chunks of potato.
A pot of masala tea and homemade custard rounds out the meal wonderfully.
Prices here, in general, are slightly higher than places like the Park Lane, but the superior quality, to say nothing of the wonderful ambiance of both the dining room in the hotel or the outdoor restaurant, makes it well worth the price. The staff is most accommodating for special requests and that, combined with the excellent and attentive service, makes the whole experience just about perfect. It is obvious from the way the other guests, both Indian and non-Indian, are enjoying themselves, that they agree. Two people can eat a meal from “soup to nuts” for $10 to $15; add another $5 or so, if alcoholic drinks are involved. This would compare to around $50 for a similar experience in North America.
After a delightful interlude of three hours or so, you ask the chowkedar at the gate to call you an auto-rickshaw for the trip back to town. The only downside to the Green Hotel, if you could call it that, other than having to eventually leave, is the distance back to town. It takes 15 to 20 minutes and about 30 rupees (80 cents) to get there by autorickshaw. A small price to pay for such a beautiful time.
If you choose to stroll back on foot, it would take about an hour, and it’s a great way to work off the meal. Do this in the late afternoon or early evening, however, and not at high noon!